Out Of Blood And Love

Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

ARS MAGNETICA
—Pablo Neruda

From so much loving and journeying, books emerge.

And if they don't contain kisses or landscapes,

if they don't contain a man with his hands full,

if they don't contain a woman in every drop,

hunger, desire, anger, roads,

they are no use as a shield or as a bell:

they have no eyes, and won't be able to open them,

they have the dead sound of precepts.

I loved the entanglings of genitals,

and out of blood and love I carved my poems.

In hard earth I brought a rose to flower,

fought over by fire and dew.

That's how I could keep on singing.

(trans. from the Spanish by Alastair Reid)

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—Medusa